Tag / 1000blackgirlbooks

by booksoverlookedblog

#1000BlackGirlBooks: Amber and the Hidden City

For my next pick from the #1000BlackGirl book list, I chose Amber and the Hidden City by Milton J. Davis. After reading some pretty heavy books, I wanted to get something a bit more light-hearted. I also opted for a middle-grade book so I could read it a bit faster than some of the other novels I’ve covered on here.

And I’m really glad I did! I liked the titular Amber right away, and the writing is solid and easy to get into. Perfect for a middle grade book. There’s also not a ton of waiting around for the plot to start, which I like.

Thirteen-year-old Amber is at a crossroads in her life. After summer break, she’ll be going to a new high school that none of her friends are attending. This is especially daunting because her blunt personality makes it hard for her to make new friends. To top it all off, she just used magic for the first time in her life.

Amber visits her grandma, Corliss, during her summer vacation, hoping to figure out all these changes in her life. Corliss finally tells Amber the secret she’s hidden her whole life: she is from Marai, a magical city that has been hidden from the outside world for thousands of years. The leader of Marai, the Sana, is dying, and nobles are vying for power in attempts to become the next Sana. The villainous Bagule is a strong contender for the title, but his rule would likely spell disaster for the city. He wants to open up Marai to the world, something that other nobles strongly advise against.

You’d be forgiven for making comparisons between the book and Black Panther, even though Amber and the Hidden City was published before the Marvel film. Fortunately, other than both works featuring a mysterious African city, the stories are quite different.

Corliss reveals how she and Amber can stop Bagule’s rise to power. Amber is a seer, and her powers are just beginning to wake. They must travel to Marai, whereAmber can use her gift to select the next Sana, someone who will protect the city and help it prosper. They travel from the United States to Paris to Senegal to Dakar, and finally pass through a magical veil that brings them to Marai. Along the way they are pursued (and sometimes aided) by Aisha, a deadly shape shifter. As they travel, Amber learns to use her powers as a seer to see the inner truth of the people she encounters.

One thing I am always conscious of in fiction is how women are treated as characters. Are they shrinking violets? Are they balanced characters? How much “screen time” do they have when compared to male characters? I know that many male (but not all!) authors have difficulty portraying women in ways that female readers would find authentic.

I was absolutely delighted that female characters played a central role in the story. Amber and Corliss have their moments of doubt and fear, but that’s totally normal in the situations they’ve been thrown into. They also display courage and compassion. Amber also acts like a thirteen-year-old girl actually would. For example, when she has to share her bedroom with a boy, Amber’s pretty freaked out about it. She spends too much time in the bathroom to avoid seeing him and texts her best friend, asking what she should do in this situation.

I also really liked Aisha. She’s definitely a “true neutral” character, who puts her survival ahead of everything else. While others in the book have their own goals — Amber wants to get to Marai, Bagule wants to be Sana — Aisha only wants to do what’s best for herself. Even if this means betrayal. That’s a fine villainous trait to have, but she was just so cool that I could never make myself hate her.

That’s not to leave out the male characters, though! Amber’s great-grandfather is a source of wisdom; his apprentice, Bissau, is crucial to bringing Amber and Corliss to Marai; Bagule is appropriately despicable.

There are a couple things that I didn’t love about this book. The first is that there were still several places with grammatical issues, but nothing that some editing wouldn’t be able to fix.

The second is that we’re told over and over again that opening Marai to the rest of the world is a terrible idea. This is Bagule’s plan, and this is why he cannot be made Sana. Somehow, opening the city will bring ruin to Marai and the world.

We never find out why this is, though. Towards the end of the book, Amber’s great-grandfather implies that Marai is a cage for some dark, evil force. However, no one ever mentions it again, or even says what it is that Marai’s protecting the world from. After waiting so long for an explanation, I was a bit miffed when that was all we got. I imagine it will be expanded on more if there’s a sequel.

At this point, there is one thing left to talk about. You guessed it, it’s race!

I’ve just finished a Multicultural Literature course, and one of the first things we learned in it is basic ways to classify multicultural books. The Cooperative Children’s Book Center (CCBC) classifies diverse books in the following ways:

  • By and about – the work is by a member of a specific culture or group, and about someone in that culture or group (ex. Persepolis, by Marjane Satrapi)
  • By and not about – the work is by a member of a specific group or culture, but not about that specific group or culture. (ex. The Snowy Day, by Ezra Jack Keats)
  • About but not by – the work is about members of a specific culture or group, but not by a member of that group (ex. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, by Rebecca Skloot)

Additionally, books can be classified as “culturally neutral”, “culturally specific”, and “culturally generic”.

I would classify Amber as “by and about” – the same category that I’m trying to read more from. I’d also say that it’s “culturally generic”. It features diverse characters, and the cultures of these characters affect their decisions and reactions to events. Even so, the story is not about African cultures that Amber and Corliss encounter. The story is about their journey to Marai.

One other thing worth noting is that all the characters in the book are Black, even the most minor ones. I thought that was pretty cool. Though I’ve tried to read more diverse books, I’m not sure I’ve ever noted ones that have casts entirely made up of people of color.

When I attended the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI) Summer Spectacular, one of the interviews I got to watch was a conversation with authors Jason Reynolds and Nic Stone. Along with sharing their writing process, they talked about interacting with kids, Black Lives Matter, and writing diverse books. When talking about doing a reading, Jason Reynolds told this story:

This young kid raised his hand and he said, ‘how come you never write White people in your books?’ …He’s not being sort of provocative, he’s like, ten. This was an earnest question. ‘How come you never write White people in your books?’ And I said, ‘You know, in my world, sometimes I believe it’s okay for Black children to live a life uninterrupted, and that’s fine, you know?’ And then I said, ‘does it bother you?’ And he said, ‘Of course it doesn’t bother me, because they’re not that different from me.’ They’re kids! It’s all the adults who are hung up.

Jason Reynolds, 2020

I’d never thought about it like that, but now that I have, it makes sense. I’m glad I found a book with only Black characters, where they can have their adventure, uninterrupted.

by booksoverlookedblog

#1000BlackGirlBooks: Americanah

First of all, I’m sorry about the late post. I was incredibly busy working on my finals, but I’m happily on my winter break right now!

The other reason this post is late is because…well, it’s kind of a mess. I’ve written, edited, and re-written, but Americanah, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, is a complex work. I don’t feel qualified to write a nuanced, in-depth discussion about this novel, but I decided to give it a shot anyway.

I started reading #1000BlackGirl books to learn, and the experience has varied so far. I’ve gotten way more out of The Hate U Give and The Color Purple than NOLA Gals and Sound. So when I read the description of a young Nigerian woman going to America to continue her education, and learning what it means to be Black in America, I was here for it.

The first thing I learned from this book is that I don’t know shit about Nigeria.

I only knew very vague facts about Nigeria before I started this book – something about tribes and a military government, and that it was densely populated – and not much else. When one of the characters, Aunty Uju, begins and affair with someone known only as “The General”, I decided it was time to learn a little bit more about the country. I don’t have a ton of free time anymore, but I do have enough time for a couple Wikipedia articles, and read through some about Nigeria’s political history.

This was a new experience for me. I’ve done research on things I’ve read about in stories because they piqued my interest, but I’d never done research to better understand the context and setting of a novel. Even after I did, I still felt like there was a lot for me to learn. But that’s kind of how all of  Americanah made me feel.

Americanah follows Ifemelu and Obinze, a young Nigerian couple. When constant strikes impede their university education, Ifemelu decides to go to America to complete her Bachelor’s degree. Later, Obinze tries to move to America as well, but is denied a visa in the aftermath of 9/11. Instead, he goes to London, hoping to start a new life and someday make it to the United States.

This book covers so much that I’m not sure I’ll be able to touch on everything here. t also took me a year to read this book, grad school frequently halting my progress. There’s things in the beginning that I’ve probably forgotten, or things that I meant to take notes on and didn’t. It chronicles the immigrant experience for both these characters, while Ifemelu – and her blog – discuss race in America.

In trying to plan this blog post, I felt very much out of my depth. I have very few experiences in common with Ifemelu and Obinze. I’ve never had to use another person’s social security number to get a job, have never left my home country for reasons other than vacation, and I can’t say that I have any real idea what it means to be a Black person in America, or in England. I know what it means to be a well-meaning White person, like Kimberley, one of Ifemelu’s employers. Trying my best to be inclusive and empathetic, while knowing that I will never truly “get it”. I’m on the outside, looking in, and hoping I’m doing more good than harm.

I suppose I’ll start at the first thing in the book that struck me: a realization of my White privilege in a way that I’d never thought of before. Near the beginning, Ifemelu goes to get her hair braided, and the hair dresser tells her the process will take six hours. Six hours?! You’d need to take a day off work to get your hair done! I sat in a salon chair for three hours a couple times, and I hated it. It looked nice when I was done, but three hours of making uncomfortable small talk was torturous. I can’t imagine was six hours of that would be like.

One chapter in the book is actually dedicated to Ifemelu’s hair. As she starts searching for jobs in America, she uses relaxers to make her natural hair more acceptable to White interviewers. After she gets a job, she wonders if she would have been hired if she’d worn her natural hair. Ifemelu’s immigrant aunt, Aunty Uju, also gets rid of her braids and relaxes her hair so her patients take her more seriously. The relaxers burn Ifemelu’s scalp and she eventually forgoes it, joining online communities for natural hair, and wearing her own natural hair as well.

This becomes one of the main themes of the book: Ifemelu’s identity as a Black woman, juxtaposed (and sometimes in conflict with) her identity as an American. For example, she practices an American accent, until someone compliments her on not sounding African, after which she switches back to her Nigerian accent.

I’ve been reading Ibram X. Kendi’s How to be Antiracist as I work on this post. In it, he writes about “dueling consciousness”, drawing on W.E.B. Du Bois ideas of “double consciousness”.

They joined other Black people trying to fit into that White space while still trying to be themselves and save their people. They were not wearing a mask as much as splitting into two minds.

The conceptual duple reflected what W.E.B. Du Bois idelibly voiced in The Souls of Black Folk in 1903. ‘It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others,’ Du Bois wrote. He would neither ‘Africanize America’ nor ‘bleach his Negro soul in a flood of white Americanism’. Du Bois wished ‘to be both a Negro and an American.’ Du Bois wished to inhabit opposing constructs. To be American is to be White. To be White is not be a Negro.

Kendi, I. X. (2019) How to be an Anti-Racist, p. 28

Ifemelu’s story is largely built around this dual consciousness. So many of her experiences in America are affected by her skin color, even as Americans around her say they don’t see race. A perfect and all too real example is when Ifemelu goes shopping with her friend Ginika, shortly after Ifemelu arrives in America. When buying clothes, they get helped out a sales associate, but can’t remember her name when asked by the cashier. The cashier asks what color the employee’s hair was, but it doesn’t help, since they both employees had the same hair color. After they leave, Ifemelu asks why the cashier didn’t just ask if it was the Black girl or White girl who helped them. Ginika laughs, and says in America, people pretend race isn’t real.

This is something I have done. Once at work I was trying to point out a customer to my boss, struggling to remember what she was wearing. After he found the customer, he asked me, “Why didn’t you just say she’s the only Black person here?” It had never occurred to me, even if it would have made finding the person easier. Why is it so hard to say, “She’s Black/Latinx/White/Asian” and use race as a neutral descriptor?

Here’s the thing: I’m uncomfortable doing that, and many White people I know are as well. It’s hard for me to say why that is. Part of it, for me, was because I spent most of my life living in majority White cities, where diversity was more of a vague idea than something I had to think about every day. I have this notion that describing someone by their race, no matter the reason, is inherently racist.

And while I don’t know if that’s “okay” or not, as I reflect more on current events, I’ve come to realize that discomfort is a problem. If we’re going to make any progress towards justice and tearing down racist systems, we have to be able to have discussions about race. Just as you can’t have a conversation if the other person isn’t listening, you can’t have a conversation if the other person is too afraid of being wrong or feeling uncomfortable to talk.

Then there’s Kimberly, one of Ifemelu’s first employers in America. When I wondered before what benevolent racism looks like, I now understand that it looks like Kimberly. Kimberly dotes on Ifemelu not only because she’s a good nanny, but because she’s Nigerian. She shows Ifemelu souvenirs she’s collected from second- and third-world countries, saying things like, “the poorest people we saw were also the happiest.” It sounds so patronizing, especially when you consider how Ifemelu’s family often struggled to pay rent. Ifemelu was definitely not happier for her poverty. Kimberly is a tourist in the cultures of others, but sees it only at a surface level, rather than engaging with it in a deeper, more meaningful way.

If I’m being totally honest, I’m guilty of this, too. I was very skeptical when I first read about cultural appropriation, because I didn’t want someone telling me the way I was enjoying things wasn’t right. I got a little defensive. I had to learn and reflect, and become more aware of my actions and the things I say. For example, I used to love the misapproprated phrase “spirit animal”. It was a fun, jokey thing for me, and I didn’t want to give it up. Whenever I said that something was my “spirit animal”, I was ignoring and disrespecting Indigenous cultures. I’ve since learned better and stopped doing that, and I try to be aware of cultures not my own. I’m going to keep making mistakes, and I’ll keep getting things wrong until I know better. The best I can do right now is keep learning, and to change my ways based on what I’ve read and experienced.

And, as I’m now seeking out anti-racist reading material, as above, some of it has been hard for me to take. There are things that I’ve read in Kendi’s aforementioned book that I’ve initially taken issue with or had a hard time getting behind. It’s only by reminding myself to keep an open mind and that I have no place telling a Black author what’s racist and what isn’t. I need to shut up, listen, learn, and grow.

I feel like this post is kind of a mess, and there’s so much in Americanah that I won’t be able to cover the whole novel properly. But before I finish up here, I think I need to talk about Ifemelu’s American boyfriends.

Her first is Curt, one of Kimberly’s relatives. Ifemelu is hesitant about dating him at first, and Curt tells others that it was because she didn’t want to date a White person. This isn’t true; she just wasn’t sure about dating a relative of her employer. There’s a couple ways I interpreted this. The first is that Curt couldn’t believe Ifemelu wouldn’t want to date him, and had to make the excuse that it was about race. Or, by saying that he’s the one who doesn’t care about race, he appears to be more progressive and open-minded. Of course, if he really doesn’t care about race, then why bring it up? Curt is using his relationship with Ifemelu to virtue signal, so it’s not a huge surprise that their relationship doesn’t last.

The next is Blaine, a Black university professor and activist. Though he and Ifemelu are both intelligent, passionate people with similar interests, they have several conflicts in their relationship. A large part of this is because Blaine tries to stifle or change Ifemelu’s voice throughout their relationship. This is most apparent when it comes to her blog. By this point in the novel, Ifemelu makes her entire living on her blog. Blaine constantly badgers her to make it more professional or academic, citing the responsibility she has due to her high levels of readership. She resents this, and the pressure Blaine puts on her.

Blaine’s sister, Shana, is another hurdle to overcome. In a book with a lot of asshole characters, Shana is easily the most self-centered. Along with that, she’s jealous of Ifemelu for getting so much of her brother’s attention. She also belittles Ifemelu’s experiences in America, and says that she can’t fully participate in discussions about race in the United States, because she isn’t American.

There is so much going on in this book that I can really only cover a little bit, and these are some of the things that stuck out to me. In some ways, I feel like this post is a good representation of where I’m at right now, in trying to learn more about race and be better than I am. I’m scratching the surface, and I’m more in tune with the obvious stuff that’s easy to notice and understand. There’s an ocean of information to swim in, and I’m still splashing in the shallow end. I’m glad that I have books like this to help open my eyes, and teach me how to swim in the deep end. I hope I get there some day.

by booksoverlookedblog

The Hate U Give

The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas follows Starr, a sixteen-year-old Black girl living in two worlds. She attends an expensive and mostly White prep school,  Williamson High School, while her family lives in the dangerous lower-class neighborhood, Garden Heights. Starr feels like she has two identities: Garden Starr, and Williamson High Starr. When her Black friend Khalil is shot and killed by a White cop and Starr is the only witness, she finds her identities clashing as she decides whether or not to speak out about what happened.

It’s a great read with memorable, vivacious characters, and hard to put down. It was also notably one of the most frequently challenged books in 2018. The reasons given for the challenges were fairly standard: sexual innuendos, drug references, profanity, things you can find in a lot of YA books. But what made this different from others on the list was because the book was deemed “anti-cop”.

I’m against censorship in general, while at the same time I understand its uses. I don’t think young children should be exposed to gratuitous images of sex and violence, or have the vocabulary of Deadpool. But I don’t like when ideas themselves are censored. Trying to ban a book because it has themes you don’t agree with doesn’t sit well with me. I think it’s insulting to readers that someone else will try to decide for them if they should or shouldn’t have access to a book, or if a reader is mature enough to handle the contents. It also makes me think that those who try to ban books don’t have faith in the people they’re trying to protect. It’s important to give adolescents opportunities to grapple with challenging material. Banning books denies teenagers a chance to engage with it, and limits their ability to learn and think critically about the issue at hand.

The Hate U Give certainly made me do some grappling with myself, starting with Starr’s two versions of herself. This isn’t something I’ve ever had to deal with personally. I have to change my behavior for the setting that I’m in – I don’t act like I do at home when I’m at work – but that’s something everyone has to do.

It made me think of my non-White friends, especially those who weren’t Christian and attended my Catholic high school. Did they feel like they were living in two different worlds? I wondered if I’ve ever said or did something to make them feel like that. I know I’ve said the wrong things in the past, and I’m sure I’ve committed many microaggressions without realizing it.

Other differences between my life and Starr’s life are made clear very quickly. In her narration, Starr says that Black kids get two versions of “The Talk”. First there’s the birds and the bees, and them there’s the cop talk: what to do if you’re stopped by a cop.

I want to tell you a bit about my hometown, so you can understand the attitudes I was taught about the police. I was born and raised in a small, conservative city that was part of the rust belt. Our main industry was our two prisons. Everyone I knew had at least one relative working in the prison system. This meant that many families of inmates came to live in my city, and many ex-cons stayed after they were released. From when I was growing up to graduating high school, crime increased. News stories about meth labs – and meth lab explosions – became commonplace. Shootings became a regular occurrence. The city that had always been regarded as safe was becoming scary.

Seeing that, we loved our cops. The police force budget was always a hot topic in mayoral elections. Hell, even our hockey team’s mascot is a police officer. If a cop was in my school, he was there to warn us about drugs and alcohol, as part of the DARE program. No resource officers, no metal detectors to worry about.  I was always raised with the idea that cops are there to protect you. It stayed with me for a long time, even after I heard stories of police brutality and racial prejudice in the police force.

I’ve written, edited, and re-written this entry, because this is something that I still struggle with. To be totally honest, it took me a long time before I was able to figure out why “All Lives Matter” was a phrase my woke (for lack of a better word), liberal friends disapproved of. It was only after learning more about the mantra of “Black Lives Matter”, police brutality, and actually talking to my non-White friends about current events that I was able to figure it out.

I’ve heard of “The Talk” from Bruce Springsteen’s “American Skin (41 Shots)” and in podcasts, but it’s something I never had to experience.

I hadn’t paid attention to the Trayvon Martin case when it happened. Part of my privilege, I understand now. But I did pay attention to Tamir Rice and Eric Garner, and watched Michael Brown’s murderer get acquitted on TV.

Then Freddie Gray. Philando Castile. George Floyd. Breonna Taylor. It happened again. And again. It was hard for me to accept that the people who are supposed to protect us could be killers.

And if I ever got pulled over, I wouldn’t be shot based on the color of my skin.

This is where Starr’s story really begins: in a car with her friend Khalil, pulled over by a White cop. Khalil is shot and killed by the cop, and Starr witnesses the event. The story then follows Starr as she decides whether or not to talk – to the police, to the media, to her friends – about Khalil’s death. At the same time, she’s trying to live in a neighborhood ruled by gangs while navigating complicated friendships and romantic relationships.

After Khalil is killed, Starr doesn’t tell her prep school friends that she knew him. Her Garden friends, though, are frustrated by how Starr doesn’t want to talk about it. She doesn’t trust the police force to handle the investigation well. She does eventually agree to give the police a statement, because her uncle is a cop. She trusts him, if not the police force as a whole. Starr’s decision to talk the police, to give witness testimony, and to appear on a national news program about the killing are a major part of her internal conflict, and so much of that ties into her two different identities.

The people that Starr surrounds herself with factor in to which Starr she’s going to be. Most notably, there’s her Dad, Maverick.

I love how supportive Starr’s parents are. I’ve talked about how parents in YA novels are usually unimportant, out of the picture, or totally incompetent. In The Hate U Give, Starr’s family play a huge role in her story. They offer her advice, protection, and endless love when she needs it most.  Maverick is a proud Black man, and understands how discrimination and prejudice affects him and his family. He’s a powerful figure throughout the book, that Starr and her brothers look up to.

There’s also her mother, Lisa, who supports Starr through the hardest times and offers Starr advice about a troubled friendship. She’s a momma bear, incredibly protective of her kids. Her marriage hasn’t always been perfect – Starr’s half-brother is the product of Maverick’s infidelity – but she is able to forgive him and set boundaries. That implies a depth of their relationship that you don’t often see in YA fiction. Lisa helps Starr navigate the aftermath of Khalil’s death, supporting her choices and advising her when she’s conflicted.

The book’s relatable in a lot of different ways, and it was definitely written from a teenager’s point of view. Starr and her friends quote vines, fangirl over Drake, and the book’s full of pop culture references. I have to wonder how well those references will hold up in years to come, like mentions of The Beatles and Elvis in The Outsiders, or the out-of-date maxi pads in older editions of Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret.

One of the things that really struck me was the character Hailey. Hailey is one of Starr’s White friends from Williamson Prep, but they’re drifting apart before the book begins. It started with Hailey unfollowing Starr’s Tumblr after the latter posted a picture of Emmett Till.

Hailey drops some timeless classics when it comes to justifying racism. She tells Starr to pretend a basketball is fried chicken, and asks her Asian friend if her family eats cat at Thanksgiving. When she gets called out on it, her defense is, “it was just a joke! Why are you so sensitive?”

I’ve heard that one a lot, most recently when I heard someone say, “Ugh, Jews,” in reference to a Jewish person who’d missed a bill payment. money. A glance and a “Wow” from me, and the speaker immediately jumped to this. “It’s a joke!”

However, discerning students of comedy will note that (a) it’s wasn’t actually a joke, and (b) “jokes” like that are usually scratching the surface of a deeper held prejudice. Humor is a powerful tool. It helps make things that are ugly or scary palatable. We use humor to let out things that aren’t always socially acceptable to let out: fear, or self-esteem issues, or our prejudices. It’s a tactic I use a lot to deal with things that I’m worried about, or to defuse tension.

Hailey also drops a good, “it’s not about race”, another argument I’ve heard far too many times. Once, I heard someone absolutely livid over the story about two Black men being arrested at Starbucks…for the exact wrong reason. “You can’t go into a store and not buy anything! But they had to go and say it was all about race!”

Which is funny, because I can sit at coffee shop and wait for my friends to get there before I order anything, and miraculously not get arrested.

Hailey’s final insult comes when she says that Khalil deserved to be killed. She says Khalil was a “gangbanger” and drug dealer, and the cop did the world a favor by shooting him. This is a narrative that’s easy to get caught up in.

In Psychology, there’s something called cognitive dissonance, and it’s something you’ve probably experienced. In short, it’s when our behavior or values clash with new information. It’s an uncomfortable place to be, so we try to relieve some of that dissonance through changing our thoughts or behaviors.

I’ll give you an embarrassing example from my life, when a production of The Rocky Horror Picture Show came to my university. If you’ve never been to a live performance, you’re known as a “virgin”, and go through a ritual to pop your Rocky Horror cherry. I’d gone up onstage to get de-virginized, doing an embarrassing task with the other Rocky Horror virgins. I was so mortified, I didn’t have any fun at the show that night.

After, when anyone brought up Rocky Horror, I jumped in the conversation with a huge grin. “It was so much fun! I loved it!” I kept saying that, even though I did not enjoy the show. Why? Because I’d voluntary embarrassed myself in front of dozens of people. I needed to justify that somehow. I tried to make myself believe that my embarrassment wasn’t for nothing, and that I’d had a great time.

I bring this up because I want to think Hailey is experiencing cognitive dissonance when it comes to Khalil’s murder. If she was raised like I was, she probably grew up thinking that cops are heroes, not potential threats. The people who are supposed to protect us doesn’t fit with the notion that they can kill innocent people. It’s easier for Hailey, and many like her, to write Khalil off as criminal scum and nothing more. Hailey doesn’t know the desperate, sad circumstances that led Khalil to become a drug dealer. She just saw the end product.

I’m focusing on Hailey, probably a little too much, because I’ve been Hailey. Not just in terms of cognitive dissonance, but because I’ve made those “jokes” and those ignorant comments. Sometimes I’ve been justifiably called out on them; other times it’s been a longer process to figure things out. Everyone has implicit bias, but it’s not until we know we have them that we can change them.

This is a very in-depth look at a relatively small character, but the tension between Starr and Hailey is only one of the book’s conflicts. There’s Starr’s inner turmoil, family drama and the outside pressures from both of Starr’s worlds. There’s the King Lords, Garden Heights’s powerful and dangerous gang, the press, the cops…and a teenage girl trying to figure out where she stands in all this mess.

There’s a lot more I could say about this book. It’s well-written and gripping from start to finish, with memorable characters. It very much made me think of how my own privilege affects me every day, and helped open my eyes to both of Starr’s worlds. This is an important book, and all too reflective of current events. If you haven’t read it yet, do it.

Before I end this, I want to add that there are some ways to see your implicit biases without having to be called on it. Project Implicit has a number of Implicit Association Tests that you can take that may reveal your unconscious thoughts. Plus, they’re kind of fun to do.

I highly, highly recommend this book.

The best books are the ones that make you see the world a little differently. This is one of them.

#BlackLivesMatter

BlackLivesMatter
Showing Up for Racial Justice
The National Bail Project
American Civil Liberties Union
NAACP Legal Defense Fund

by booksoverlookedblog

Sound by Alexandra Duncan

Before I get into this, I want to say that I read the novel and wrote this post before I heard about the controversy surrounding Alexandra Duncan’s novel, Ember Days. I am planning on commenting on it in the future, but this post is just about her novel Sound. 

After reading some pretty heavy stuff, I wanted to try something a bit lighter. I chose Sound by Alexandra Duncan, a standalone novel in her Salvage series. According to the description on Amazon, Salvage was praised as, “brilliant, feminist science fiction” that would appeal to fans of Firefly and Battlestar Galactica. I like all of those things, so I eagerly dove into Sound.

I really wanted to like this book. But I couldn’t.

It has everything I would normally love: strong female characters, a well thought-out and unique sci-fi setting, and a protagonist with PTSD who overcomes her fears to save the day. It’s well-written, and I sped through the first five chapters. But the main character, Miyole, makes a choice that drove me crazy, and I could never quite reconcile with it. Spoilers below.

Sound opens on Miyole, a sixteen-year-old research assistant on board a Deep Sound Research Institute (DSRI) spaceship. She researches pollinators like butterflies and bees for the purpose of terraforming and colonizing other planets. Right away I like the opening, how it centers on the small things in science fiction that you wouldn’t normally think about. Her ship is also organic and grown, made of of self-healing nacre. I love the idea of biological ships, and it’s an idea I’ve only seen used in a few sci-fi stories.

I also loved how much detail and thought was put into this story’s universe. A filthy, abandoned space station, or a city built of spindles under the sea of Encladeus. Like the need for pollinators, small aspects of life in space make the setting memorable.

The story really begins after a ship crashes into the Raganathon, the DSRI ship Miyole lives and works on. Pirates have attacked a trader vessel, and the survivors of the attack are taken on board the Raganathon. The survivors are a teenager named Cassia, her niece, and their cat. Cassia’s brother has been captured by the pirates, and likely sold into slavery. Cassia wants the DSRI ship to give chase and find her brother, but they refuse. They can’t change their entire course and mission for one person, who’s unlikely to be found. Cassia is furious about this, and Miyole is frustrated by her commander’s lack of action.

Working together – and accidentally taking the pilot Rubio along with them – Miyole and Cassia steal a shuttle and set out to save her brother.

It sounds really exciting, but this was the point where the book started getting really frustrating for me. Since she was twelve, Miyole’s dream was to join the DSRI, which is incredibly selective, and only launches new missions every few years. She had to be at least 18 to apply for a position with the DSRI, and she’s only sixteen. Desperate to be aboard the next mission, Miyole enlists her brother-in-law’s help to hack into government databases and change her birth year. This is a very dangerous and illegal thing to do. If Miyole gets caught, it’s not just the end of her career. It would also ruin her life, and the lives of her brother-in-law and his wife.

Stealing a shuttle and (more or less) kidnapping a pilot is going to land her in some serious trouble, and authorities looking closely at her records. But she doesn’t think about any of this, or consider the consequences until more than two-thirds of the way through the book.

I know that every story needs a jumping-off point, and this is where the adventure really begins. There’s some justification for it: Miyole’s  frustrated by DSRI’s inaction, and she has a crush on Cassia. But after seeing how much risk she took just to apply to the DSRI, and how much she wanted this job, I wanted to see more than that.

At one point in the book, Cassia is badly injured, and may not survive. I actually hoped that she would die, because then Miyole would be caught in space. If the person she risked her life and career for was gone, what would she do? Would she keep going to find Cassia’s brother, or return to DSRI with her tail between her legs? Or something else entirely? I would have loved to see how Miyole would justify leaving everything behind for Cassia, only for her to die.

But, Cassia lives, and the story continues.

The novel has the overarching plot of rescuing Cassia’s brother, and it’s tied together by a string of different adventures. Sometimes it felt like each step they took on their journey could be its own short story. Along with an eerie, abandoned space station, they have to deal with Cassia’s shady contacts, carbon dioxide poisoning, space pirates, alien monsters, and being enslaved themselves before they reach their goal. There were a lot of cool, detailed settings, especially the seas of Encladeus.

My main problem with this book was the characters. We first meet Cassia after she’s taken aboard the DSRI ship, so we don’t get to see what she’s like when she feels comfortable. Cassia is angry. She’s a cold survivalist, and will do whatever it takes to get her brother back, including murdering others. That’s where Cassia starts, and that’s where she stays. She has so few redeeming qualities I could never actually bring myself to like her. Miyole falls for her though, and likes her enough to steal a shuttle.

So when Cassia breaks Miyole’s heart, Miyole could very well be left with nothing. No career, not future, and not even a girlfriend to explore the stars with.

Since I chose this book from the #1000BlackGirlBooks list, I feel like I can’t end this entry without talking about race. Miyole is Haitian, but grew up in Mumbai after her home “the Gyre” was destroyed during a hurricane. She survived the hurricane, but her mother was killed, and Miyole was left with physical and psychological scars. Miyole’s mother made sure her daughter knew about her Haitian heritage, particularly the slave rebellion. It’s a source of strength for her, as is the memory of her mother. She often wonders if she can be as brave as her mother.

I am sad to report, though, that racial prejudice will still exist in the future. Miyole doesn’t really fit in with her Indian friends, which is one of the reasons she wants to get off the planet. Her accidental traveling companion, Rubio, also refers to her as “memsahib”, much to her annoyance. There’s still a decent amount of “othering”, even aboard the DSRI ship, but it’s largely microaggressions. As the story progresses and Rubio travels with Miyole and Cassia, he does learn the error of his ways and changes accordingly.

There was a lot to like about Sound, but unfortunately for me, I had a hard time getting into it. Even so, I may check out Sound‘s preceding novel, Salvage, which focuses on Miyole’s adoptive family.

by booksoverlookedblog

NOLA Gals

Before I get into NOLA Gals, I need to apologize for posting late. I’d been traveling, and also began my grad program last week. Luckily, I still managed to find enough time to finish this novel.

NOLA Gals by Barbara J. Rebbeck gives us Essence and Grace, two fourteen-year-old girls brought together by Hurricane Katrina, and Harper Lee’s classic novel, To Kill a Mockingbird.

Essence and her little sister Chardonnai are poor Black refugees from New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. They go from their flooded home to the Superdome, then to the Astrodome. There, they meet Grace, a rich White teenager, who’s volunteering with her dad. Grace and Essence bond over To Kill a Mockingbird. Soon, Essence and Chardonnai are taken in by Grace’s family while hoping to reunite with their own.

Reading that summary, you’re probably thinking the same thing I was: two girls from different worlds become friends and bridge the race and class gap between them. And that does happen, but the novel feels more like a love letter to Harper Lee than a coherent novel. Even the author’s Afterwords was about Lee’s book, rather than the story I’d just finished.

I’ve read To Kill A Mockingbird twice and seen the movie multiple times. It’s a fantastic work and I really enjoy it. The constant references to Mockingbird were frustrating because readers who aren’t familiar with it would get as much out of the out of Nola Gals as they could. It also reminded me that I could be reading a better book.

After a promising start, I found myself losing interest in NOLA Gals. It wasn’t a hard book to read, and natural disaster stories fascinate me. I had to learn to manage my expectations. I don’t mean that in a bad way, but I had come into the book with certain assumptions that didn’t get fulfilled.

The first issue I met with was that NOLA Gals was listed as a young adult novel. The term “young adult” puts me in mind of Harry Potter or The Hunger Games. I expected it to be both accessible, but have depth. As I read, though, I realized that NOLA Gals isn’t what I normally think of YA fiction. It read more like a middle-grade novel. There’s nothing wrong with that; even now I read middle-grade books. It just meant that I had to change my expectations about this book, and once I did, found it more enjoyable.

One of the biggest tells was the lack of subtlety on the part of our antagonists, the elitist families whose children attend the prestigious St. Catherine’s high school. These parents and students don’t believe that the Black refugees from Hurricane Katrina belong at their school, and they have no qualms about showing it.

‘This whole New Orleans business…these strange girls…” Mr. Townsend said, putting his arm around his wife.

‘Now honey, don’t sound like a southern bigot. As long as they keep their distance and don’t really mix in with our girls.’

‘You know they call themselves ‘gals.’ That New Orleans is as corrupt as the day is long. Some say Katrina was a fitting punishment for their sins,’ Mrs. Booth said, stroking her husband’s arm.

‘I thought the Woodsons had more sense than to take those girls in. I hope they are checking to see if the little brats have stolen them blind yet.’ [. . .]

‘You know there are black students at Saint Cat’s already,’ Mrs. Townsend said. ‘I saw a couple the last time I was there for a bake sale.’

‘Oh, yes, but you can’t compare them to those NOLA kids. Their dads are all professional. They almost belong. At least they can pay the tuition.’

We’re living in a weird time when it comes to race, with, unfortunately, more people feeling comfortable sharing their true racist rhetoric. However, most racism tends to be subtle. In a conversation like this in real life, you’re going to get more dog whistles that someone straight up saying, “The Black kids don’t belong here.” Especially in 2005 and 2006, when we didn’t have actual White supremacists marching through the streets.

I even remember Kanye West’s outburst during a Katrina telethon when he told the world, “George Bush doesn’t care about Black people!”

Watching with my mom, we were both stunned, jaws hanging open. “Even if it’s true,” my mom started, “you can’t just say that!”

Sad to think that was a more innocent time.

I could get over the blatant hate – managing expectations –  but I had a harder time getting past some of the writing itself. Writers are so often told, “show, don’t tell” to the point where it’s become cliché, but is nevertheless advice the author badly needed to hear.

I’ll give you the most egregious example. Essence and Chardonnai were separated from their family, and their grandmother died in the hurricane’s aftermath. They have no idea if their mother is alive or dead. When they finally reunite for the first time in more than a month, this is what we get.

The doorbell rang and there was Dr. Woodson and my mama. I was so happy I jumped into her arms.

 

That’s it. There’s no emotional payoff for what should be a moving scene. I’d been looking forward to the girls’ reunion with their mother. There should be a lot of different, possibly conflicting emotions here: joy, relief, sorrow, anger. Instead, we get a couple sentences that make what could have been a touching and memorable moment totally forgettable.

To me, a great novel needs solid prose, interesting, well-developed characters, and a plot I can really sink my teeth into. It’s okay if a book is lacking in any of these aspects; great. characters can make up for overused tropes, or a gripping plot helps me ignore bad writing. Since we’ve already looked at the writing, let’s take a look at the characters.

Grace is a spoiled fourteen-year-old who loves sipping stolen drinks poolside with her friends, American Idol, and her forbidden MySpace page. She’s very much a typical teenager at the start of the book. After volunteering at the Astrodome to help Katrina refugees, her world opens up. She befriends Essence and Chardonnai, welcoming them into her home and school. Grace goes from a bratty teenager to a conscientious, hard working girl over the course of the novel.

Then there’s her counterpart, Essence. Unfortunately, the main trait I would use to describe her is “scared”. “Scared”, however, isn’t a personality type so much as a reaction to her situation. The hurricane left her traumatized, and we don’t see much of her before Katrina strikes. We do know that she’s protective of her little sister, a bit stubborn, and feels out of place after she leaves New Orleans. Most of Essence’s story is spent worrying about her family, and wishing she were home. But apart from that, I don’t know if there’s much left to day about Essence.

And that’s where our plot comes in. It meanders about like a slice-of-life story, but doesn’t feel cohesive. Grace and Essence’s paths diverge and become disconnected with one another. There are plot hooks that never get resolved. But the characters lack something that makes them, and the story, compelling. They lack any agency of their own. Both girls are swept along by circumstances outside of their control: Essence by the hurricane, and Grace by pressure from her school and family.

This would actually be fine for Essence, at least for awhile. Being adrift and losing her family would make anyone feel helpless and vulnerable. It’s a major part of her character arc. Unfortunately, it doesn’t go anywhere beyond that, apart from making a couple surly comments. I kept waiting for Essence to have her big moment, to take a stand. But it never happened. She was dragged through the story without taking an active role in it.

Grace’s treatment is a little better as we watch her develop into a kinder, more worldly person. The experiences she has that help her grow are thrust upon her for the most part, usually at the behest of her parents and teachers. To be fair, that’s true for most fourteen-year-olds. She also has a moment of courage in the climax, defending Mockingbird in front of the racist parents who want it removed from the school’s curriculum.

At another critical moment, though, Grace fails to act. Essence and Chardonnai are taken back to New Orleans by their estranged father, and no one in Houston knows where they’ve gone. After a few weeks, Grace receives a letter from Essence. In it, Essence tells Grace where she is, but asks her not to tell anyone. After about ten seconds of feeling guilty, Grace decides that she’ll keep Essence’s secret.

Which brings me to my final disappointment with this book: the important stuff happens off-screen.

The resolution of the climax for both girls – missing Essence and Grace’s defence of Mockingbird – are written as afterthoughts. In the last chapter, Grace and Essence meet again in New Orleans. In just a couple sentences, we’re told that Mockingbird will remain a part of the school’s curriculum, and that Grace finally told her parents about Essence’s letter. Instead of potentially interesting internal conflict, a lot of things get hand-waved away for a suspiciously happy ending.

NOLA Gals started out promising, and there were parts of the book that were genuinely moving. The short chapters written from the point of view of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita were fantastic, and even a little frightening. It was a book that had a lot of ideas that never quite fed into each other smoothly. Although I must concede that this book wasn’t written with me in mind. If it’s something you think you would enjoy, check it out for yourself.

At this point, I have to ask myself: did I learn anything from the book? To be completely honest, I didn’t think it gave me much insight until I started reflecting on dialogue choice while writing this. I feel like, when I was growing up in the late 90s and early 2000s, racism was treated kind of like sex. You could assume other people were engaged in it, you would whisper about it, but you’d never just straight up talk about it. Or if you did – and this is still the case – you hedge your controversial statements with, “it was a joke!” or, “I’m just sayin’.” Maybe that’s not how things really were, and I was ignorant. But that’s how I perceived it.

But I look around me now, and there’s less hedging. People feel bolder, safer in saying what they mean without a qualifier. Things are becoming more like the party scene, where racists – surrounded by their friends – feel comfortable to expose their hate. They feel justified in having it.

I want to say that I don’t like the direction that we’re going in with this. But, looking around me, that’s not fair to say. It’s not a “direction”. This is where we are right now.

And while I felt that NOLA Gals could use some polishing, I’ve got to give credit where it’s do. To characters like Grace and Essence, like Scout and Atticus, and to people like Barbara Rebbeck and Harper Lee.

by booksoverlookedblog

The Color Purple

I decided to dive into #1000BlackGirlBooks by starting with The Color Purple by Alice Walker. It’s one of those many classics that I’ve never read. In fact, the only Alice Walker I’ve ever read was her short story, “Everyday Use”. For such a famous author whose work is so well known, it’s a shame that I’ve read so little of her work.

Going into this, everything I knew about the story itself could be written on a post-it note:

  1. It’s about sisters, I think
  2. Oprah was in the movie
  3. Something about shaving an abusive husband

When I got the book from my library, I was surprised at how thin it was. I’d been expecting something thick, a door stopper of a novel, because isn’t what the classics usually are? I was honestly afraid I wouldn’t be able to finish it in a timely manner, so I was a bit relieved to see that it wasn’t even 300 pages long. The Carl Hiaasen novel I’d just finished was longer than that, and Hiaasen isn’t exactly high-brow reading.

The second thing that surprised me was the readability. When I think classic novels, I usually think of long, flowery prose and hard to follow sequences. As much as I love reading, I do struggle a bit with purple prose and old timey novels.

Here, there’s two distinct voices telling the story. The first is Celie, whose passages are direct and often sparse, especially towards the beginning of the book. Nettie, Celie’s younger sister, is educated, and her letters reflect this. Through their letters – some received, some unsent – we learn the story of their lives over the course of decades. This is another remarkable thing about the novel to me. It covers such a long span of time, but it doesn’t waste words or drag it out. It never feels like a slog.

Alice Walker doesn’t pull any punches, either. On the first page, Celie is raped by the man she thinks is her father. By the second page, she’s had two children by him.

From what little I knew about the book before I read it, I knew Celie had an abusive husband. I didn’t know that she was abused long before he came into her life. Celie’s narration is concise in the beginning, but even so, I can feel her suffering and how trapped she is. For a long time, she lives in a world dominated by violent men with no way out. This is evident in even the way Celie refers to her husband, as only “Mr. _____”. He’s a source of fear and pain for Celie. It’s only near the end of the book, thirty years after it begins, that she calls him by his first name. Before she was able to forgive him, Mr. ____ had to show that he could change and do right by the woman he tormented. Celie also had to find her courage to leave him and start a life of her own. She wouldn’t be able to do this, though, without the help of Shug Avery.

There’s a lot of themes in the book: racism, sexism, spirituality. But the theme that spoke to me most was that of sisterhood and female empowerment.

Celie’s life with Mr. ____ is fraught with abuse, a cycle that continues when her step-son, Harpo, get married. Harpo loves his new wife, Sofia, but doesn’t know how to make her “mind” him. Celie tells Harpo to beat her. I initially thought this was Celie’s advice because abuse is all she knows. Later on, though, she tells Sofia that it’s because she’s jealous of her, because Sofia can fight back. And she does, frequently, hitting Harpo harder than he hits her.

Celie’s life only starts to turn around with the arrival of Shug Avery, a singer and Mr. ____’s former lover. Celie takes care of her while she’s sick, and they fall in love with each other. Shug intervenes and stops Mr. ____ from beating Celie, and helps her find the courage within her to defy Mr. ____ and eventually leave him for good. Celie starts a life of her own, making a living selling pants – Shug’s suggestion – and has her own house and store by the end of the book. Celie was in such a dark, hopeless place that she could hardly conceive of a way out. Shug’s love raises Celie up and gives her a new lease on life. Towards the end of the book, Shug leaves Celie for a younger man. Celie is heartbroken, but it doesn’t stop her from living her life.

Shug’s role really can’t be understated in this book. She’s a catalyst for so much in Celie’s life. Shug helps her find her long-lost sister (and her children, by proxy), leave her abusive husband, and stand on her own two feet.

But she also encourages Celie to rethink her views on God and religion.

Ain’t no way to read the bible and not think God white, she say. Then she sigh. When I found out I thought God was white, and a man, I lost interest. You mad cause he don’t seem to listen to your prayers. Humph! Do the mayor listen to anything colored say? [. . .]

Here’s the thing, say Shug. The thing I believe. God is inside you and inside everybody else. You come into the world with God. But only them that search for it inside find it. And sometimes it just manifest itself even if you not looking, or don’t know what you looking for. Trouble do it for most folks, I think. Sorrow, lord. Feeling like shit.

It? I ast.

Yeah, It. God ain’t a he or a she, but a It.

But what do it look like? I ast.

Don’t look like nothing, she say. [. . .]

She say, My first step from the old white man was trees. Then air. Then birds. Then other people. But one day when I was sitting quiet and feeling like a motherless child, which I was, it come to me: that feeling of being part of everything, not separate at all. I knew that if I cut a tree, my arm would bleed. And I laughed and cried and I run all around the house. I knew just what it was. In fact, when it happen, you can’t miss it.

I’d like to tell you a little but about about my relationship with God and religion, though it’s constantly a work in progress. I was raised Catholic, went to mass every Sunday and volunteered at Sunday school. My parents put me in Catholic school when I was seven, not for religious reasons, but because my parents weren’t happy with the public school my sister and I attended. I went to Catholic school for ten years straight, and I was a believer. I said my prayers every night, got the sacraments, got confirmed.

And, of all things, it was the night I got confirmed – when the Holy Spirit is sealed within my heart – that started to shake things up. I’d received a book of “prayers for teens”, and out of curiosity, opened up to a prayer for non-believers. It asked Jesus to convert all non-Christians to Christianity so they wouldn’t go to hell. I’m not sure what I’d expected, but this certainly wasn’t it.

This really rubbed me the wrong way. I had non-Christian friends who were kinder, more generous and all around better people than some of the Christians I knew. But they couldn’t get into heaven just because, as George Carlin put it, “they pray to a different invisible man than the one you pray to”?

Yeah, no.

After that, the Catholic church’s doctrine started chafing me. Jesus preached love and tolerance, and so often the church’s teachings felt exactly the opposite of that. Then a tragedy occurred in my family that shook me and my faith to the core. I couldn’t understand why God would let this happen, what was the point of allowing it to happen? I was angry and confused and felt betrayed. After yelling, “Hey God, fuck you!” I declared myself an atheist.

I missed having that faith. But years later, when I tried to reach for it, there was nothing there. Praying was like talking to a wall, or having a conversation on the phone with no one on the other line.

I found my own faith instead, inspired by the loving connections I’d made with my friends. I prayed to my aunt and grandma for guidance. I’ve sent wishes and hopes and dreams out into the universe, and seen more of God and miracles in fog rolling in over hills, or hidden depths of kindness in strangers.

What I believe now is a grab bag: a mix of agnosticism and spirituality, praying to saints and ancestors, thumbing rosary beads while keeping God the Father out of it. There’s no set doctrine, no homilies, no guilt for breaking an arbitrary rule put down by an organization built two thousand years ago. What I do and do not believe in have boundaries that are constantly changing, and I float somewhere between them.

All this to say, I felt Shug’s speech about seeing God in all things – not just a bearded White man in the sky – more personally than I thought I would. When I first picked up this book, I thought it would strike a chord in me, but I never imagined it would be this chord.

There was something else that stuck to me, too. Because with the theme of female empowerment, I cannot forget the other half of this book: Nettie, and Sisterhood.

I tend to be drawn to sister stories. It doesn’t take a genius to see why. My only other sibling is my older sister, who I’ve mentioned in the blog quite a few times. It’s pretty obvious that she’s been a huge influence on my throughout my life. We’re exceptionally close, best friends or worst enemies and not much in between. When I was a kid, I wanted to be just like her, and do whatever she did. I was her shadow, and I let her get away with way more than I should have.

I did so because I loved her and admired her. If someone hurt her, it hurt me, too. No matter how much we fought, and the end of the day, I wanted to protect her.

That was one of the first thing that struck me, in the very beginning of the book. Celie has been raped by her stepfather, and notices that he is now turning his attentions to Nettie. At the same time, Nettie is seeing someone else, a potentially dangerous man. Caught between a rock and a hard place, Celie pushes Nettie to accept her suitor. She tries to protect her sister as best she can, even if it means sending Nettie to someone else who could hurt her. It doesn’t work out, and Celie is, essentially, sold into a marriage with Mr. ___ instead.

Celie only sees Nettie once during the early years of her marriage with Mr. ___. Nettie has run away from home and her abusive step-father, seeking safety with her sister. Mr. ___ sends her away, and Celie tells her to look for the preacher’s wife, Corrine, to help her. While she’s leaving, Nettie fights off Mr. ____’s rape attempt, and he vows to punish her and Celie for it. He hides all of the letters Nettie sends Celie, which go unread for years.

I was already pretty hooked when I got to this point. When Celie finds Nettie’s letters, I knew I was doomed. There was no way I’d be able to put the book down until I saw the sisters reunited.

Nettie becomes a missionary in Africa, and in her early letters, she’s so excited. She’s traveling, meeting people, and getting an education. She also truly believes that she and her new family will succeed as missionaries where others have failed for one reason: they’re Black. But when Nettie reaches the Olinka tribe, she finds that she’s still the “other”. She may be the same race as the Olinka people, but she’s still an American with a very different culture. Part of Nettie’s story is her and her family becoming accepted in the tribe, while at the same time challenging the tribe’s traditions.

This made me think of Alice Walker’s short story, “Everyday Use”. You can read the full text here, but I’ll give a quick summary. In this story, a woman named Dee comes home with her new boyfriend to visit her mother and sister. The story is about heritage: Dee’s trying to get closer to her African roots, while her mother believes that her daughters’ heritage is all around them. You can read the story in a few different ways, but I always felt a little sorry for Dee. She’s reaching and trying to connect to a culture that isn’t her own, which doesn’t have a place in her family’s world. While we can’t know what happens to Dee at the end of her story, we do know that Nettie comes to embrace the Olinka tribe while at the same time fighting against cultural practices that hurt the girls in the tribe.

To be totally honest, I didn’t connect with Nettie’s story the way I did with Celie’s. Maybe it’s because she doesn’t come back into the story for a long time after she disappears. Or that her story is quite different from Celie’s, more about finding family than finding herself.

After she and Celie separate, Nettie is taken in by the preacher, Samuel, whose family includes a wife and two adopted children. They bring Nettie on their missionary trip because Samuel suspects the children are actually Nettie’s, which stirs some jealousy in Corrine. Years later, Nettie uncovers the truth: the children are Celie’s that they both had thought were killed by their step-father. When Nettie, Samuel, and the children finally return to America, Nettie writes that she is bringing “our children” home.

There’s a lot that I could say about this book, talking about Nettie’s journey or Sophia’s time as a maid to a wealthy White family. But I’m sure that’s been discussed time and time again by people both more well-read and worldly than me. Instead, I want to focus on the relationship between Nettie and Celie. Celie puts herself in harm’s way to protect her sister. In return, Nettie brings Celie’s children back to her. Alongside that, she gives Celie knowledge about the world through her letters, and endless, consistent love.

That’s important. Because Mr. ___ and his children don’t love her, and her allies don’t stay by her side forever. Even Shug leaves her for a young man at one point. Nettie writes Celie letters that go unread for years, that she knows her sister might never see. But she also never stops writing them, even if Celie doesn’t reply. At least, not on paper.

The novel opens with two words, “Dear God.” Celie used to write letters to God in her head, until she finally finds Nettie’s letters. After, her letters all begin with, “Dear Nettie,” indicating both her newfound spirituality, and a connection with her sister that she thought she’d lost.

These aren’t the only things worthy of discussion in the novel. There’s so much that I could get into, but these were the things that made The Color Purple so compelling to me. It’s a story of changes, of family, and sisterhood lost and found. It’s about becoming your own hero, with the ones who love you raising you up.

And I wish I could just end this post with, “it’s a wonderful book, go read it,” but I won’t get away with that. It’s time to talk about that elephant in the room: race. And it’s going to be uncomfortable for me to do, especially because I’m fairly sure I’ll be sticking my foot in my mouth. But I wanted to start reading these book to broaden my figurative and literary horizons, and I think I would be remiss if I didn’t talk about race in some capacity.

This is going to sound strange, but I can’t help draw comparisons to the way I treat race to the way others might treat sex or death. That is, it’s something that you don’t talk about. Or if you do, you only talk about it with confidantes. Most people have little formal education about the above topics; a lot of your knowledge on the subject may come from entertainment, if you don’t have any experience with it. And when you finally do engage with it, it’s not easy. It can be scary. And it can definitely leave you feeling like an idiot.

That being said, let’s talk about race in The Color Purple.

One of the first things I’ve noticed is that the characters aren’t explicitly described as Black until Nettie goes to Africa. As the Writing With Color blog points out, authors will often only describe a character’s skin tone if they’re not White, as though White is the default race for every character. And without that description, it seems likely many readers will picture that character as White. I’m curious to know that if I had read this book without knowing anything about it, would I have pictured the characters were Black? Maybe it’s an experiment I’ll test out some day.

Another thing that struck me was Sofia’s role as a maid to the White mayor and his family. As I mentioned in another post, Roxane Gay’s review of The Help really made me think about what I’d taken away from that book and movie. In The Help, the maid Abileen loved the children she took care of, and the main character, Skeeter, was deeply attached to the maid who raised her. But Sofia isn’t Abileen or Minny. She describes being a maid as slavery, and she goes for years without seeing her children. When she is finally released, the mayor’s daughter, Eleanor Jane, continues to visit Sofia. Eleanor Jane brings her young son to visit Sofia as well, cooing over the baby and asking Sofia how much she loves him. Sofia snaps that no, she doesn’t love the baby.

I just don’t understand, say Miss Eleanor Jane. All the other colored women I know love children. The way you feel is something unnatural.

I love children, say Sofia. But all the colored women that say they love yours is lying… Some colored people so scared of whitefolks they claim to love the cotton gin.

Despite Eleanor Jane’s insistence that her son won’t grow up to be racist, Sofia knows otherwise. No matter how much Eleanor Jane cares for Sofia, her son is still going to learn the prejudices of those around him. Saying that he’s not going to be racist is a nice idea, but it’s not going to happen.

What this made me think of is something I’m a little more familiar with – benevolent sexism. Put simply, benevolent sexism is the idea that women are beautiful, amazing creatures that are to be cherished and protected. It’s more palatable and subtle than your “get back in the kitchen and make me a sandwich” hostile sexism, but it’s still sexism. So I wondered: what does benevolent racism look like?

So I did what I do best: read. I found a few scholarly articles on the topic, and I’m making my way through them. In the meantime, though, I’ll leave you with this definition of benevolent racism from the first paper I read:

[B]enevolent racism is not predicated on the usual process of de-racialization. That is, rather than invoking the liberal idea of “neutrality” or color-blindness as a way to dodge, deny, or defend the racialized social system that supports White privilege (as with other types of post-civil rights racisms), benevolent racism ostensibly acknowledges and often condemns a system of White privilege. However, it does so in a way that further legitimizes and reinforces racist attitudes, policies, and practices in the name of “benevolent” aims–i.e., in the name of supporting, empowering, and/or defending the Black community (Esposito, Romano, 2014).

Other than The Color Purple, work cited:

ESPOSITO, L., & ROMANO, V. (2014). “Benevolent Racism: Upholding Racial Inequality in the Name of Black Empowerment.” Western Journal of Black Studies, 38(2), 69–83.

by booksoverlookedblog

1000 Black Girl Books

Before I get into my new project, I want to announce an update schedule change. Alongside working full time and trying to plan a wedding, I’ll be starting grad school to get my MLIS next month. I want to keep updating at regular intervals, so I’ve decided to post here every other week. I’ll also be posting about each book as a whole, rather than chapter-by-chapter reviews. If you have a Twitter account, you can follow me @nortonwriter14, where I’ll tweet every time the blog is updated. I’ll also occasionally post about books, the writing process, and probably about space and/or cats.

Thank you to everyone who’s read with me this far!

 

For three years, give or take a couple hiatuses, I’ve worked on this blog, reviewing nostalgic books, one chapter at a time. Originally, I wanted to see which old books were worth keeping, and which should find new homes. I’ve downsized a lot since those early days. There are still books that I brought with me from state to state that I’d love to review here, and maybe someday I’ll get to them. But as my life has changed, I think it’s time for this blog to change as well.

I’d debated with myself about what that change should be – one idea I had was reading through Newberry Medal winners – but inspiration struck during a trip to the local library. I was on a tour as part of my volunteer orientation when the librarian pointed out a wall of books near the children’s section. “This is something new we’re trying,” she told me. “1000 Black Girl Books.”

#1000BlackGirlBooks was founded by thirteen-year-old Marley Dias, who’s collected over 11,000 books featuring Black female protagonists. The full list can be found at Grassroots Community Foundation.  I’m a voracious reader, and I was curious to see how many of the books I’ve read made it on to the list.

Four. And of those four, only one was written by a Black author.

I went to my bookshelves and scanned titles, asking myself, “how many of these books are written by White authors? How many of them have characters of color?”

The answer was, “very few”.

I was so disappointed in myself. For all I reminded myself to check my privilege or “stay woke”, my own personal library was incredibly lacking. And that’s when I decided: I needed to step out of my literary bubble.

To be totally honest, I’m a little nervous about doing this. I can’t pretend to be enlightened, or even have a solid foundation to discuss race on. I grew up in a town and went to schools full of de facto segregation, all without knowing it. I saw White heroes everywhere, and Black sidekicks without ever thinking deeply about. Because I loved The Help until I read a Roxane Gay’s take on it, exposing the work’s flaws and all my ignorance with it.

Going through this blogging project, I know I’m going to say the wrong thing. I’m going to stick my foot in my mouth, and there are times when I just won’t “get it”. I know reading books isn’t going to completely eliminate the prejudices and biases that I have. But only by acknowledging and challenging them will I be able to change them. And this is how I’m combating them: with empathy, and information, and books.